The taxpayer, a paper products manufacturer, engaged in a hybrid transaction in which it sold some of the assets of its “Tissue Division” directly to a third-party purchaser (“Cascades”) and rolled the balance of them down to a Newco under s. 85(1) for Newco shares and sold the Newco shares to Cascades. CRA assessed on the basis that the sale of the Newco shares was on income account. The Tax Court found that the transferred assets represented about 68% of the fair market value of the assets of the Tissue Division – and perhaps significantly less, given that some of the Tissue Division assets had not been valued. Accordingly, the requirement of s. 54.2 - that all or substantially all of the assets of the business have been transferred to a corporation – had not been met, so that s. 54.2 did not deem the gain on the share sale to be a capital gain.
In dismissing the taxpayer’s appeal, Webb JA stated (at para. 41):
I agree with the Tax Court Judge that conveying 68% of the assets used in the Tissue Division to 722 would not satisfy the requirement that all or substantially all of the assets of the Tissue Division be conveyed to 722. Therefore, it is not necessary to revise the calculation to include an amount for these [other] assets.